If one looks carefully at the other side of her Gothic account it seems obvious that the people were anxious to make them as comfortable as was possible within their primitive means. But the party proceeds on its way, without breakfast, though: ‘Tea we had with us, but nothing could be got to make it or drink it in.’
On Sunday they arrived at the town of Acqua Pendente and ‘the streets were filled with men wrapped in their large cloaks, who were loitering about, or standing grouped together in corners, in that apathetic state of indolent taciturnity so expressive of complete bodily and mental inertion.
‘How unlike our English associations is a village in these countries, where a narrow street of dilapidated and windowless hovels, surrounded by filth, and inhabited by squalid wretchedness, is all that answers to the name! How melancholy and miserable do they seem, and how often has my fancy returned to the smiling villages of my own country, where neat cottages, and little gardens, scattered over the green, present the happy picture of humble contentment, cheerful industry, and rural happiness!’
And so our intrepid travellers went on their way. At one inn, where they got little or nothing to eat, the author says that the famed Muscat wine was so delicious that she hoped they would ‘not follow the example of an old German prelate, who, it seems, drank it at this inn till he died’.
A week of filthy beds and vile food did not tame her combative spirit. ‘If we did not eat, however, we were eaten; whole hosts made us their prey during the night, while we lay shivering and defenceless. This indeed is almost invariably the case throughout Italy. The people drain your purses by day, and the fleas your blood by night. They came within sight of all their endeavours!’
She was given perhaps to a fair amount of romantic exaggeration for the sake of her readers, but one must nevertheless concede that she did indeed rough it on the road to Rome. ‘Our longing eyes were intently fixed on the spot where we were told that it would first appear; when, at length, the carriage having toiled up to the top of a long hill, the Vetturino exclaimed, “Eccola!” The dome of St. Peter’s appeared in view; and, springing out of the carriage, and up a bank by the road side, we beheld from its summit, Rome!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ROME AND NAPLES
Railways soon ran the length and breadth of Italy, so that the journey to Rome became far more comfortable. Even by the 1850s tourists could get there from London in four and a half days, by taking the train as far as Marseilles and a boat to Civitta Vecchia — where Stendhal had been the French consul in the 1830s. With regard to the shipping lines, Murray’s South Italy and Naples, 1853, states: ‘Formerly there was considerable competition between the companies; but they have latterly amalgamated, by no means to the advantage of travellers. The fares are exorbitant, and there is no longer any inducement to accelerate the speed. The complaints are consequently numerous, and travellers are frequently exposed both to annoyance and loss by the failure of the steamers to keep their engagements. Considering the importance of the line, and the large profits which the companies derive from English travellers, the proprietors should bear in mind that a want of punctuality, incivility on the part of their officers, or exorbitant charges, will inevitably force their best customers to support the French mail line exclusively, or to fall back on the old system of travelling by land.’
These complaints are omitted from the next edition of the handbook, suggesting that they had some effect; or perhaps Murray himself had been taken to task, because a note in the preface says: ‘The Publisher thinks proper to state that Mr. Blewitt, the author of the former edition of this Handbook, having been prevented superintending the present, is not responsible for the changes that have been introduced in it.’
By 1872 the railway to Rome went via Paris, Munich, Innsbruck and the Brenner Pass, a distance of 1547 miles which took three days, for the fare of twelve pounds. In 1875 there were 1600 miles of railway in Italy, and 8164 by 1889. Bradshaw, in 1897, says that Rome could be reached from London in two and a half days for ten pounds.
Such progress towards becoming a great European power was not, according to Macmillan’s Italy and Sicily, 1905, an unmixed blessing, was even ‘a little precipitate, as no social transformation had taken place which correspond to the political revolution. Owing to the variety of local conditions, one district is almost a century behind another. The Italian revolution was a triumph for the middle classes, and the labouring classes had to bear an undue share of its burdens, while they profited but little from its immediate benefits.’
Most of the hotels were full when Charlotte Eaton and her companion arrived in Rome after their arduous journey from Florence, but when they found one: ‘You cannot conceive, without having travelled Vetturino, and lodged in the holes we have done, how delightful is the sensation of being in a habitable hotel, how acceptable the idea of a good dinner, and how transporting the prospect of sleeping in a clean bed.’
Thirty years later there were not only far more hotels, but many comfortable lodging houses. Families who intended to stay a long time ‘may meet with roomy and splendid apartments in some of the great palaces; in those of the Dukes Braschi, Altieri, Ceva, and Sermoneta, there is a princely suite generally let to foreigners. However respectable the landlord may appear, a formal written agreement is desirable, and a careful verification of the inventory still more so. In the Corso it will be as well to stipulate for the exclusive possession of the windows during the Carnival, or the lodger may be surprised to find his apartments converted into show-rooms during the festivities, besides being obliged to pay for a place at his own window.’
Murray also tells us that foreigners, especially the English, ‘cannot be too strongly cautioned against a set of disreputable characters who are constantly hanging about the Piazza di Spagna and the neighbouring streets, offering lodgings for hire. Such fellows ought to be avoided by respectable persons; those who place any confidence in them, as regards procuring apartments, will probably have to repent having listened to them.’
For the purpose of changing money there were three English bankers in Mr Murray’s list, one of whom was also in the wine business. ‘It is impossible not to feel, after any competent trial, how vastly different is the treatment an average Englishman receives from an English banker above an Italian one. No silly vanity should induce any traveller to afford certain grandiose Roman establishments the opportunity of fleecing him, for they will not even do it with civility, except to a duke or other great lord.’